


Filling in the Gaps

by zenonaa



Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 14:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7442725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenonaa/pseuds/zenonaa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'He crossed one leg over the other and rested his arms on the top thigh. “What is it that you want?”<br/>“Huh?” she went, and she remembered that she requested that he come here for a certain reason. “Well. I wasn’t present at the last trial, so I wondered...”<br/>Touko trailed off.<br/>“... You want me to explain it to you,” he said.' </p><p>Fukawa and Syo don't share memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Filling in the Gaps

One moment, Touko was burning under the intense stares of her classmates at someone else’s trial, and the next, she found herself crouching in a small room where no walls could be seen except a strip above the door. Bookcases, all around her, stuffed full, that reached all the way up to the pitch black ceiling, hid the room’s walls from view, while boxes, folders and a stepladder on wheels left only the centre of the tiled wooden flooring exposed. Head spinning, she rose to her full height. Her body swayed as she looked around, and it continued to even after she let her gaze fall to her feet. Touko tried to think back to what happened between Chihiro’s trial and waking up here, but it was like raking her fingers through water in the dead of night, where she couldn’t see anything but could feel the existence of something between her digits.

She scrunched up her face, closed her eyes and in her mind, tiptoed over to her last memory.

**“Well, then. It’s time to finish the opening act. I want to hear directly from the actual person herself...”**

The voice didn’t belong to Touko, and it didn’t belong to that other person in her. An outbreak of shivers seized Touko and an invisible hand clasped her neck as the words spoken in her head reverberated. Byakuya, Byakuya Togami, he said them, to her, and she had stuttered, unable to respond beyond a few muddled words before she fell backward. Darkness had caught her, only to let Touko’s unconscious form fall the rest of the way to the ground. Presumably. She couldn’t recollect anything. Never could when that other person fronted.

Her eyes widened as much as humanly possible, and then maybe more so. The imaginary hand that felt suspiciously real squeezed her neck again.

That other person, whose name stung the back of her throat, must have taken over. Touko’s legs wobbled and she nearly collapsed, but Touko bit her lip and straightened up with determination. Though her legs were reluctant to cooperate, and her feet had to be deliberately set down so she didn’t accidentally step down on the side of her foot, she padded over to the door and opened it. The main section of the library lay ahead of Touko, devoid of anyone else. Good. Perfect. It was such a relief that Touko didn’t bother herself with wondering why she had been in the back room of the library, and seeing as it was quite dusty in there, she didn’t want to stay and try to find out.

Walking came more naturally to Touko the more she did it, and by the time she left the library and was halfway down the stairs, she didn’t need to plan her every step. She could think of other things at the same time, though only a single thought pulsed in her mind.

In the past, she and that other person would leave each other notes so when they inevitably swapped over, the alter who was fronting would have a rough idea of what to expect and a basic summary of important developments that they missed out on. This short-lived arrangement didn’t start when that other person appeared. No. Touko didn’t know about that other person at first, not until some time after her childhood friend’s face appeared in newspapers and on television, and not until some time after she unfolded a letter on her desk from that other person asking for a thank you note.

It was only when people gave the murderer, the serial murderer, a name that the next folded letter was signed with, that it clicked why Touko had all these gaps in her memory, and why her parents and teachers and peers scolded her for things that she couldn’t remember doing.

Two people lived inside of her.

Their note-leaving arrangement didn’t last long. That other person’s writing was almost illegible, anyway, and she prefered to write big on walls with blood that Touko could only glimpse before she had to stumble away, lightheaded. Moreover, Touko didn’t trust that other person to keep any of their notes hidden or even bother to read them. Eventually, whenever Touko felt like she had to inform that other person of something, she would write on her skin under her sleeve or near the scars on her leg.

After this last thought, Touko’s focus bounced back to the present, where she was standing in her room, by her desk, unable to see any notes. Nausea rolled in her stomach, its bigger movements inducing gagging. Because Touko was still alive, that other person must not have killed anyone. She hadn’t murdered Chihiro. Byakuya had been wrong, but if that other person didn’t kill Chihiro, then it had to be someone who knew that other person well enough to copy the murderer.

Her gagging threatened to produce something as she realised that it must have been Byakuya who killed Chihiro, who must now be dead. Touko could barely breathe. No, he couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t.

According to her Electronic Student ID Card, it was nearing midnight. Tempting though the idea of going to sleep was, she tucked her student card back into her bra and trudged over to the door. Touko opened it, stepped out, closed the door behind her and breathed loudly as she approached Byakuya’s door, fist poised and trembling slightly.

She arrived at his room. Slowly, she uncurled her index finger and rang the intercom.

Even if his betrayal ought to have cast him down to the same depths as the other boys and men in her life, her heart ached like he wasn’t just some guy she had known for a few days, but someone she had known for longer.

Perhaps love at first sight existed after all.

Perhaps she was delusional.

A minute passed uneventfully. Touko could have returned to her room, but she didn’t want to do that because that would involve walking and her legs could barely keep her upright, let alone move, so she waited. She would have stayed there all night, but then the door opened just enough that it stood ajar. Byakuya peeked out, face only partially visible. It reminded Touko of when Byakuya, Aoi and Makoto tried to coax her out of her room during Chihiro’s investigation, only Byakuya wasn’t trembling like she had been and like she did now.

“Y-Y-You’re alive!” Touko exclaimed.

“That’s Fukawa talking, isn’t it?” he asked, gripping the handle, ready to close it as soon as the situation called for it. Behind him, darkness cloaked his room, but the light in the halls meant that she could see Byakuya’s face which was wary but no less handsome than usual.

“Fukawa, Touko Fukawa,” she babbled. “Yes, that’s me. T-Togami-kun, what happened...?”

His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, what happened?”

Touko shifted a foot forward. He tensed and glanced down, but quickly fixed his eyes back onto hers.

“I don’t know what happened,” she said, voice rising in pitch as she progressed. “A-After... she... took over in the trial room, I don’t know what happened, and... and...!”

“Shut up,” he snapped. Touko shut up, nearly in tears mostly because of how much she agitated herself. Byakuya’s eyebrows rose and not as rudely, he said, “You don’t remember part of the trial, hm...? Interesting.”

He smirked. She hugged herself and nodded.

“Why don’t you come in for a little while?” he quietly offered.

Touko stared. “C-Come...?”

“It doesn’t require a strenuous answer. Yes or no?” he said.

She slapped her hands over her mouth and nodded again. Then to make doubly sure that he knew her answer, she said, “Y-Yes!”

“Good,” he said. He reversed into his room, disappearing from sight. Moments later, she heard a clack from inside his room, and the lights turned on.

From the door to the other end of Byakuya’s room stretched a red floor runner, with a golden stripe on both of its longer sides. Touko shuffled across it, eyes restless as she took in her surroundings. Just inside of his room, at the entrance, before it opened up to the rest of the room, four paintings hung on the walls, two either side of her. One painting depicted a castle on a hill under a full moon, and she didn’t examine the other three because when she averted her eyes from the first painting, she saw Byakuya standing by his bed, glaring, which made her jump and speed up.

Once she was by the bed with him, a fact that caused her skin to tingle, he strode over to the Chippendale-style chair on the other side of the floor runner to the bed and sat down. He rested one arm against the periwinkle tablecloth on the circular table next to him. Like on the table in her room, Byakuya also chose to place a vase in its centre, though Touko’s tablecloth was lavender pink, white in the middle, and her vase on a shelf contained lily of the valley, not a single yellow tulip.

Byakuya crossed one leg over the other and said, “Sit.”

Only one chair existed in the room, the one he sat on, and her first thought was to come over and sit on his lap. She took a step toward him.

He motioned toward his bed. “My bed will do.”

Touko immediately sat down where he specified, face warm then hot, rising in temperature as she thought more and more about how she was sitting on his bed. Her fingers squirmed on her lap.

“So, you do not remember what happened after Genocider Syo fronted?” he asked.

The name sent a chill through Touko that, as it faded, left a creeping sensation in her skin.

“R-Right,” she said. She poked her right hand’s index finger against the left corner of her mouth.

Byakuya twitched his foot and propped his cheek in his palm, elbow on the table, and frowned, not looking at her. Either he was mulling over what she said or he expected her to elaborate, because he didn’t say anything.

He brushed his little finger across his lips, seemingly in thought. She gulped.

“I-If I’m alive, that means she didn’t kill Fujisaki,” Touko told him.

“That’s correct,” Byakuya replied, his attention on the wall furthest from the door that they came in through.

Touko hunched her shoulders, and she let herself chew on her nail for a bit before she spoke again.

“B-But you’re alive, so it couldn’t have been you either,” she said.

Byakuya turned his head a bit, keeping his cheek in his hand, and met her gaze. “You’re right. Neither I nor Genocider Syo murdered Fujisaki. It was Mondo Oowada, and I knew that from the very beginning.”

“Oowada?” repeated Touko, eyes widening, though not because she cared about his death. She didn’t. Her hand fell away from her lips and wrung her wrist. “I don’t understand...”

“He lost his temper after Fujisaki revealed his secret,” said Byakuya, not using ‘she’ pronouns for Chihiro, and he went onto describe how by chance Byakuya saw Mondo leave the girls’ changing room, and how Byakuya adjusted the crime scene afterwards so it resembled one of Genocider Syo’s crime scenes, and how they discovered that Chihiro announced himself to be a boy to Mondo, who couldn’t bring himself to admit his secret until the very end, only expanding on it once Monobear lay out the facts first.

While he narrated what happened, Byakuya kept his voice steady as though reading aloud a bedtime story to a half-asleep child, filling the pocket in her memories. Touko listened wordlessly, head bowed.

“So you see, your confession that evening to me was no longer a burden and allowed me to use Fujisaki’s murder to its full potential,” said Byakuya as his account drew to a close. He gave a long enough pause that she decided to sneak a look at him, and she saw him flick his tongue. It slipped back into his mouth and a smirk tugged on Byakuya’s lips, reminding her that he was a very, very cruel man, but also a frighteningly brilliant one.

She inhaled, quaking slightly, and said at the carpet, “If... you hadn’t seen Oowada just after Fujisaki’s death, would you have told everyone about... her?”

His answer came just moments later.

“I considered revealing it at breakfast the next day so if Genocider Syo tried to silence me, you would be the prime suspect, but as I confirmed at the trial later, no one would have taken my word for it and would only have believed it if Genocider Syo herself appeared.”

“W-Why would she try to silence you?” asked Touko, chest tight and feeling dizzy. She straightened up with a jerk, and her vision caught up after a short delay, though it was blurred. Raising her voice, like that would disperse the fog in her head, she said, “She wouldn’t know that I told you...”

“That’s something I learned later. I didn’t know at the time that you didn’t remember the same things,” he pointed out. “Back then, to the best of my knowledge, the only way that Genocider Syo could ensure that no one discovered her secret was by killing me before twenty-four hours had elapsed.”

Touko stiffened, squeezing her knees.

“S-So,” she tried but failed to swallow, though she managed to initiate eye contact with him, “what if Monobear hadn’t introduced that motive, or...?”

Byakuya waved his hand and the rest of her question died in Touko’s throat, her lips tingling with words that she had been about to say.

“We’re not going to play a game of ‘what ifs’, Fukawa, but I would have been forced to reveal your secret soon after you told me, regardless of Monobear’s motive.” He hesitated. In a thoughtful tone, he added, “You know, this turned out well for the both of us.”

She let out a confused noise, a slurred ‘huuh?’

“I don’t have to constantly check over my shoulder in case Genocider Syo is stalking me with revenge in mind because now she will be the prime suspect if I was to die, and she doesn’t kill if she will get caught,” he explained. “As for you...”

He struck a grin.

“... you no longer have to worry about hiding her from us.”

Touko squinted. Byakuya chuckled a little. In any other situation, she would have delighted in the sound, but she winced at the pang in her chest that his laughter inflicted. His eyes weren’t aimed at her and his cheek wasn’t resting in his palm anymore, hand instead holding his chin. Seconds after she started staring at him, he lowered his arm to his lap, barely smiling but still smiling, really honestly smiling, and the skin by his eyes wrinkled.

Her lips quivered.

“I don’t?” she asked, referring back to his claim that she would no longer have to hide that other person from him.

“Hm?” he went as he looked toward Touko. He sat up properly and folded his arms over his chest. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? You always had to keep people at a distance so they wouldn’t discover your secret, constantly living in fear that she will strike again. Well, Genocider Syo will always be near the top of the list of suspects of every murder from now on, which will deter her from future murders, and so you have nothing to hide. Better that they find out about her this way than at a trial that is really for her, wouldn’t you agree? It’s all laid out like a winning hand in a game of poker.”

“That’s-!” Touko yelped, temporarily rigid, but the meaning of his words dissolved her body’s tension. She batted her eyelashes, face softening as she smiled, and touched her fingers to her lips. “Y-You’re right...”

Byakuya shifted in his seat. Disgust oozed into his features, nose stuck up, teeth gritted together and eyes narrowed. His reaction couldn’t have been a response to what she said, because she only told him that he had been right, so his face must have contorted at something else she did. He adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat, becoming more mild in expression.

“That’s all,” he said. “You can go now.”

Touko hesitated. “‘Can’...? D-Does that mean I don’t have to go? That I could stay... with you?”

He straightened his back with a lurch.

“And let people see you leave my room in the morning?” he barked. “Are you stupid?”

Any and all venom that he spat at her simply dribbled down her face, as harmless as rain against a window. He jabbed his finger toward the door.

“Leave,” he commanded, barely restraining his anger, finger shaking.

Okay, that did sting, even if just a little bit. It sent a jolt through her that shot Touko to her feet and off the bed.

“Y-Yes!” she squeaked, and she obeyed. She dashed over to the door, seized the handle but before she opened it and left, she risked a quick look over her shoulder.

Byakuya’s eyes bored into the table beside him, his arms folded over his chest and the fingers on one hand drumming against the top of his other arm. Touko turned her head forward and slipped out of the room, well aware of the fact that the only reason he gave as to why she couldn’t stay the night was because of what others would think, rather than what he thought.

As the door shut behind her, she wondered what would happen if she visited him again.

No. Not if. When.

* * *

 

**“I’ll give you a hint... I’m wearing red lingerie this morning!!”**

* * *

 

Touko swung her legs as she sat on one of the benches in the locker room, kneading her thighs with her fingers, almost scratching at her skirt. Occasionally, she snatched up her student card and switched on the screen, just so she could check the time. After doing this several times, she kept her student card in her hand and stared at the screen, swiping her thumb against it whenever it started to dim. The numbers that indicated the time, slightly past noon, seemed to change even more slowly under constant surveillance.

Undeterred, she stubbornly remained in her spot until her patience was rewarded. At the entrance, the noren rustled, as quiet as girls whispering rumours about the female classmate sat in the row in front of them, and she turned her head. A smile crept across her lips at the sight of Byakuya, who passed through the noren and swaggered over to her.

“D-Did you get my letter?” she asked.

“Obviously, or else I wouldn’t be here. I found it earlier this morning,” replied Byakuya.

She pressed her lips together, failing to bite down her smile as he sat on the bench opposite her. Not the same bench as Touko, but he didn’t situate himself too far away from her. Wiggling excitedly, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Not that she wanted to. Really, she should have been thanking him for letting her look at him.

He crossed one leg over the other and rested his arms on the top thigh. “What is it that you want?”

“Huh?” she went, and she remembered that she requested that he come here for a certain reason. “Well. I wasn’t present at the last trial, so I wondered...”

Touko trailed off.

“... You want me to explain it to you,” he said.

She nodded. He sighed.

“Seeing as you dragged me all the way here, I might as well,” he said, and like the night of the second trial, he described the third trial to her, full of sharp hand gestures that he sometimes needed to pause from so he could fix his glasses back into position.

The first trial that he narrated to her had been easy to understand, but this one, with red herrings made of tacky hammers and a cumbersome costume, spread across the morning, proved harder to come to grips with, and the betrayal of this trial, as it didn’t involve Touko this time, had her leaning forward as opposed to curling up.

“I k-knew that cow was fake!” Touko told him, nostrils flared. “P-Preaching about how we should all adapt when she ended up killing because she couldn’t cope with being here any longer... and she didn’t even admit her real name until she lost. All that, for n-nothing...”

“I feel the same way. It disappointed me,” said Byakuya.

She froze. Her heart felt ready to burst and rip through her chest. “D-Disappointed...?”

“I don’t care for dishonest people, and it was obvious from the first time I heard her speak that she dressed herself in lies,” said Byakuya. “What was underneath turned out to be rather pathetic. Celes almost fooled me into thinking that she would be a worthwhile opponent.”

Touko wiggled and forced herself to ask, “D-Did you like Celestia Ludenberg, then, if you didn’t like Taeko Yasuhiro...?”

“There was nothing to like,” he retorted. “Her attempts to win me over were pathetic. That girl reminded me of slime...”

He shuddered while Touko, in contrast, relaxed.

“Is there anyone in this school that you do have your eye on?” asked Touko, jiggling her legs.

Byakuya spread his legs apart, adopting a wider, more open stance, and created a steeple with his hands, which hovered close to his lips.

“It would be unwise to dismiss any of you, even Hagakure, because any idiot can be driven to murder,” Byakuya replied seriously. Then, with a glint in his eyes, he said, “However, Kirigiri and Naegi are quite interesting, wouldn’t you say?”

She would not phrase it like that at all. A knot formed in her stomach.

He swept his hand through the air. “Kirigiri refuses to divulge her talent while Naegi’s is worthless. Yet despite this...”

A pause. Byakuya cupped his chin.

“... they’ve proven themselves to be proficient. Especially Naegi, who has exceeded my expectations. Granted, for someone like him, that isn’t hard because my expectations of him were never high, but he has shown himself worthy of my eye. At this rate, he will be a future victim... or Kirigiri...”

Touko’s head didn’t move, but it felt like someone had shaken it furiously. She reached a hand toward him and said, “B-Byakuya-sama...!”

“If you’re going to panic, there’s no need.” He bared his straight white teeth in a grin. “What will happen will happen, and you just need to make sure that you’re not the victim in order to live for the longest time possible.”

Her hand grew heavy and sagged. All of her body seemed to have gained weight but she pushed herself to her feet.

“What about me?” she asked loudly. “Aren’t I c-capable?”

Byakuya’s brow furrowed. “You readily told me about Genocider Syo, so I don’t think you...”

“But I hid it for years before!” she yelled, and he actually flinched. Her mouth stretched out, and the strain from doing so felt like it could crack her cheeks. “I’m j-just as capable as Kirigiri and Naegi or any of the others!”

He stood up abruptly and the both of them glared at each other. Touko’s chest heaved, and her fists, either side of her head, were balled together so tightly that her nails, digging into her palms, would leave behind pink marks.

With no one saying anything, Touko’s mind could catch up with the thoughtless actions of her body, and when it did, her heels glided down to the ground and her fists fell apart into twitching hands. The warmth in her face set alight, into a fire that she cringed at, that her stick-like limbs crumbled in.

She broke eye contact first.

“I... I...” Her hands thrashed together. Feeling his gaze drill into her, she looked up. “Byakuya-sama, I don’t...”

Byakuya slipped a hand under her chin and tipped her head back, in a warm room with no security cameras, where no one could spy on them, with no one else around. In truth, Touko chose this place because of those attributes, hoping it would allow their situation an opportunity to open up to a kind of intimacy that she saw on her second visit to his room since the death of Chihiro Fujisaki. Though his room held a security camera, his judgement, his guard had slipped, and fixed on more firmly after.

“Tell me, are you saying that you’re a threat too?” he asked calmly, with eyes that weakened her knees.

Touko’s lips writhed, refusing to cooperate. “I...”

In her fantasies, at this point, he would crash his lips into hers, interrupting her, cutting her off in an overdone trope, but he didn’t. He just studied her with amusement, with a faint smile.

“What’s your answer?” he asked in a murmur. In a murmur.

She sorted through her memories that had jumbled together when he touched her. “I’m... I c-could be... a threat...”

“But will you be?”

Touko could swear that his lips drifted nearer to hers, which could only mean one thing. It meant she had been sucked into the haven in her mind where fantasies comforted her but tricked her into dependency, because the better they were, the more empty she felt when she left them and the more she desired to return.

Her jaw clenched.

“Not to you,” she mumbled.

“You’re right,” he agreed. He bent his knees, dropping his face to her level, and his breath rushed into her lips, followed by something more tangible and warm that pressed firmly.

His lips.

She tensed. This small movement, coupled with his own ones as he adjusted his angle, bumped their noses together. After the third collision, Byakuya drew back a few inches and whipped off his glasses. The temples clicked shut. Moments later, she felt his hand, no longer holding his glasses, against her cheek. Though she could see his hand at the edge of her vision, she homed in on his eyes. His eyes, blue, barely open, and so, so close.

He caressed her cheek. She shivered but didn’t shy away.

This was really happening, just like when she visited his room with red lingerie on underneath her clothes.

“Take them off,” he said.

The chill that tore through Touko transcended all levels of coldness and burned her.

“M-My clothes?” she asked, blushing.

“No, not your clothes,” he said, grimacing. His hand vanished from her cheek and his head withdrew enough that they weren’t sharing the same air, but not enough that an onlooker would think they had nothing to do with each other. “Your glasses. Take your glasses off.”

“O-Oh,” said Touko. She did as he asked, palms sweaty. Without her glasses, the world around Touko melted and even Byakuya, positioned right in front of her, was barely discernible. Keeping her fingers crooked around her glasses, she let her arm fall to her side and hang straight, and her other arm followed in example.

Byakuya raised his hand back to her cheek, and his other hand slid against her arm as he gripped her waist. Touko only had the chance to gasp before Byakuya’s lips grazed against hers, while her heart stuttered and beat against her chest so hard that she wondered with a twinge of fear if her heart might break through and stab him.

She grasped one of his shoulders, stomach hardening, and Byakuya didn’t shatter, or disappear, so she let herself be consumed by his citrus scent.

This was really happening. They were kissing. Again. He chose to kiss her. Again. His hand, on her waist, moved to wrap around her back. Touko repositioned her head as she fitted his bottom lip between her lips, sucking and licking on it until it was as wet as her tongue. Then, she held onto his shoulder harder and nibbled.

Whether he understood her intentions or responded innately, he opened his mouth wider all the same. Byakuya tilted his head to one side and as Touko’s tongue shot forward, he greeted it with a swipe from his own. Their lips separated, though not by much, tongues exchanging strokes and taps until the two students simultaneously pushed back into each other, lips and tongues cramming together. His tongue scrambled on top of hers and curled, so he could lick the back of her teeth.

It sounded more poetic in purple prose, but Touko wouldn’t trade this for any fictional kiss from a brooding bad boy protagonist.

Byakuya’s arm retracted from around her middle so his hand could tug on her hip. The kiss halted as he sat down onto the bench behind him, breathing ragged. He pulled Touko onto his lap so she straddled him and resumed their kiss. She groaned and flung her glasses to the bench, hearing it clatter as it landed. Both hands empty, she buried them in his hair and started rocking against him. Every touch lit up her skin in a flickering internal flame.

He moaned, choking on the sound.

“I-I’m not crushing you, am I?” she asked, leaving just enough space between their mouths to talk without his lips muffling her.

“You’re too thin for that,” he replied. “Besides, I... p-prefer bigger girls over thinner ones, and...”

She rubbed her crotch against him in the first of a series of grinds, tongue sticking out. The friction shocked both of them. A rumbling resonated in his throat. Byakuya’s lips ploughed into hers and squashed against them as he straightened up. Soon, he slouched, then soon he kept changing back and forth between the two postures, no part of him able to hold still. Not his lapping tongue, or his hands that massaged whatever they passed over, or his nose that would sometimes knock against hers as he searched for a different position to experiment with.

Most importantly, what didn’t keep still was the bulge that rose up from between his legs.

He extracted his tongue from her mouth and before she could think about the possibility that he had finished, he lowered his lips to her neck. She cried out, feeling the muscles in his lips contract, her voice quavering soon after the noise left Touko. His mouth, pulling at her neck, pinched at her prickling skin, and he lifted a hand to her shoulder, where he grabbed her blouse. Meanwhile, his other hand clutched the bottom of her blouse and began to haul it upward.

Touko shut her eyes, panting. “I’m y-yours to do with as you wish, Byakuya-sama...”

And she almost got to prove this. Almost.

“Hello?” came a voice that definitely wasn’t Byakuya’s, too high in tone and distorted as well. Both of them ceased what they were doing immediately, but didn’t pull apart. “Is someone there?”

It took Touko a few seconds to recognise it.

“F-Fujisaki?” said Touko, chin streaked with drool. Not necessarily her drool or just one person’s. She looked over her shoulder toward where the voice originated from.

The lockers.

Byakuya glowered. “Not quite. It’s Alter Ego. For some reason, it isn’t in sleep mode. Perhaps it has something important to share with us...”

To Touko’s displeasure, he removed his hands from her body. She didn’t get up though, nor did she disentangle her fingers from his hair.

“Get up, and don’t move,” Byakuya said, so she got up then, feeling the absence of his heat strongly. Touko patted the bench until she found her glasses and put them back on, pouting as he marched over to the locker where Alter Ego resided. He fixed his collar, retrieved his glasses from his jacket pocket and tweaked his belt before opening the locker door.

As far as she was aware, Alter Ego couldn’t hear, so Alter Ego calling out for someone had been pure coincidence rather than because it knew that Touko and Byakuya were nearby. She whined and shoved her fingers into her hair, dishevelling her braids a bit. Byakuya took the laptop to an unoccupied bench and sat down. As instructed, she didn’t move from her bench, and she contented herself with listening to Byakuya’s fingers dance across the keyboard and Alter Ego’s responses.

“I finally managed to decrypt the school's files on this laptop! I’m sorry it took so long!”

He typed.

“To summarise, a ‘certain plan’ was put in place at this school. The plan was ‘to lock down the students inside Hope's Peak Academy, and have them live a communal lifestyle’... Those were the words used. Furthermore, it wasn't just a normal communal lifestyle... The locked-down students, depending on the circumstances, were to spend their entire lives at the school.”

Byakuya typed some more.

“Hm, yes. It is like our predicament. Not only that, but the authority that established that plan was none other than Hope's Peak Academy's own head office.”

Touko’s hands flew to her mouth. “Y-You mean to say that it wasn’t a criminal group who trapped us here but the school faculty...? So that bear belongs to them? They’re behind this?”

Presumably, Byakuya typed down what she said.

“Well, according to the files, the plan was a response to a certain incident that happened a year ago. Several times, it’s referred to as ‘The Worst, Most Despair-inducing Incident in the History of Mankind.’”

Touko gave a snort at the name at the exact same time that Byakuya clucked his tongue. Alter Ego carried on.

“It seems that this event was pretty tragic. After all, it resulted in Hope's Peak Academy ceasing its work as an educational facility, forcing it to close down.”

Byakuya typed louder.

“I’m sorry, but that’s all I know. The files say nothing else about it.”

He sighed and typed briefly.

“Ah, wait! I found one more thing that's important... Very important. It's probably... about the mastermind...”

This caused Byakuya and Touko to sit up straighter.

“The person in charge of Hope's Peak Academy's head office, the office that locked us down, that was Hope's Peak Academy's headmaster. It's highly likely that the mastermind is that same headmaster, the man behind the plan. By the way, that headmaster is a man in his late thirties and there's a high chance he's currently somewhere inside this very school. That is all the information I have to share.”

“Y-You mean some middle-aged pervert is controlling that bear and touching himself while he watches us on camera?” asked Touko, horrified, hands over her heart. “L-Like when we had s-”

“- stop,” said Byakuya, with a word that was not the one she had been about to use. He held up one hand. “I suppose I should inform the others about this, or else they will complain later.”

Byakuya stood up. Touko did too.

Noticing, he fired a glare at her. “You stay here and wait.”

“W-Wait?”

“By the laptop,” he explained. He set it down on the bench and pointed at the floor. “There. Guard it. And don’t disappoint me...”

Touko could never make him feel as disappointed as she felt right now.

“You’re capable of doing that, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Y-Yes!” Touko piped up and she clambered over to where his finger was aimed. She dropped to her knees and knelt in front of the bench with the laptop on it.

Byakuya smirked, looking almost fond. His cheeks were still tinted pink from their make out session. “Good.”

Then he left.

* * *

 

**“I've just walked out of a nice long bath. Is there anything else you want to know? Maybe my horoscope for today?”**

* * *

 

When she heard footsteps from beyond the noren, Touko twisted around and held her breath, watching her classmates as they filed into the locker room. Her shoulders slumped when she realised that Byakuya hadn’t come with them, so she turned back to the laptop, no longer interested in any of them.

Makoto stepped forward and asked, “Did you come here to listen to what Alter Ego has to say as well, Fukawa-san?”

“I... I've already heard it together with Byakuya-sama,” she said, and as she cast her mind back to what had transpired, she smiled. “... Together with Byakuya-sama!”

**Author's Note:**

> it was supposed to be togafuka weekend but that didn't go as planned it seems
> 
> ah well
> 
> also togami didn't go back to the locker room with the others partly because he had business to attend to in regards to his dingle


End file.
